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“I’m a warrior. I have faced creatures that⁠—”

“I don’t care!”

He stopped.

Korinnae’s eyes were beginning to fill, but she looked more furious about the tears than upset by them. “Ria stayed when I needed her. She didn’t know if she could fix what the hunters did to me, but she stayed anyway.”

He felt his chest tighten.

She wiped at her face with the back of her hand. “Why won’t you ask her to stay when you need her?”

He had no answer that wouldn’t sound hollow, and Korinnae seemed to realize it.

She shook her head. “You’re dumb.”

“Korinnae.”

“And I’m mad at you.”

“I gathered that.”

“I’m really mad at you.”

“Aye. I gathered that too.”

She turned and marched toward the door.

“Korinnae.”

She didn’t stop.

He knew exactly where she was going. Ria had become the person Korinnae sought out whenever something upset her, and right now, he suspected his niece wanted nothing to do with him.

He could still hear her accusation. But you’re scared of Ria. He wasn’t scared of Ria; he was trying to be reasonable about a situation that involved two different worlds, responsibilities neither of them could abandon, and a future neither of them had discussed until today. Unfortunately, his ten-year-old niece had made reasonable sound a great deal like “cowardly.”

He considered going after her, then dismissed the idea. She was almost certainly with Ria by now, and following her into the workshop would accomplish nothing except give both of them someone to yell at.

He left the gym and went back to his office. There were messages waiting for him, along with several reports he’d ignored. He forced himself to deal with them, though his attention wandered more than once. He managed to finish one report before giving up on the second.

Enough time had passed for Korinnae to cool down, or at least downgrade from really mad to merely mad. So he pushed away from his desk and went looking for her. He checked the kitchen first. She had developed a habit of raiding the cabinets whenever she was bored, but it was empty. He looked in the lounge next and found no sign of her there either. The office was large, and Korinnae had discovered more places to occupy herself than he’d known existed. He checked the place where she sometimes watched television, then the smaller conference room she’d claimed on more than one occasion for whatever project had caught her interest that day. When he found both empty, he headed for Ria’s workshop.

His unease grew as he approached the door. He hadn’t wanted to come back here so soon, but if Korinnae wasn’t anywhere else, she had to be with Ria.

Asterion knocked, and a moment later, the door opened.

Ria’s expression hardened when she saw him. Behind her, more of the shelves had been emptied since he’d last seen them. “What?”

He deserved that. “Is Korinnae with you?”

“No.”

He frowned. “She came to see you.”

“She did. We talked.”

“And?”

“And she left.”